The Poomaale Estate, Coorg

The nature of farm activities at the Poomaale Collective is getting more experimental. New initiatives to calibrate the food intake of each member are in progress. They will help us understand the quantity of food we need to grow to suffice and the variety we need for a nutritious, balanced diet. In addition, water and waste management activities like greywater recycling took place. We have also procured a good variety of native heirloom seeds, a one-time purchase, to build our seed banks and become seed-sufficient down the line. The highlight, however, was the occasional visits from vipers, crates and even the Indian Cobra to our farm which is an indicator of a fertile coffee farm. We look forward to a merry and eventful winter at the collective.

Work is in full steam as the monsoon has finally given way to winter. The first month will be restricted to post-monsoon maintenance work which is a must in these parts – repairs and de-weeding the roads, retailing the damaged roofs, correcting the moisture damage to walls, equipment and furniture etc.

On the farm front, we are excited to partner with Clea Chandmal to try out the forest floor way for coffee. We are starting with three experimental blocks capturing different zones in the estate to make sure we have a robust solution.

The highlight of the month was Coffee Santhe, an annual event that brings together the coffee community – planters, roasters, baristas, cuppers etc. For us, it was eye-opening to witness the depth of the coffee industry. The surprise, however, was the feedback we got for our robusta coffee, with some Q-graders referring to it as ‘A beauty’ and our coffee scoring between 83 and 86.5 (rare for a coffee in general and almost unheard of for robusta). We are now looking forward to streamlining our practices to give traceability across the zone and some interesting post-harvest practices to enhance the taste and scores even further.

Kodagu comes to a halt during the monsoons. You will find most people sipping chai on a planter’s chair, waiting for sunset.

But this time we took on a few micro-projects and built some nice makeshift shelters for the veggie beds and compost pits and started the process. While the composting didn’t go as well because of the moisture, we realised we needed to add a lot more carbon than normal to offset that. It’s not called failure if you’ve learned something in the process! But overall, things seem good right now. The leafies are coming out well and the gourds too.

The Blyton Bungalow opened to members and we engaged with folks with tons of hospitality experience to train our team in barefoot luxury (a term we have grown increasingly fond of). A month into the process, the team is doing some great work. We have hosted a few families and the feedback has been phenomenal. We have also leveraged the local understanding of the flora and fauna by picking our naturalists from the local tribal hamlet and training them on the narrative experience. This was an extremely productive exercise, and they were more than eager to learn.

Poomaale received a whopping 186 inches of rainfall this monsoon. Coupled with the 13 inches of rain received in March, we are mostly landing in the excess rainfall zone (~200 inches of rain with a month of monsoon to go). The good news is that despite all this rain, the Kembuva Poley runs crystal clear and even more exciting things are shaping up here.

To begin with, the veggie beds now have beans, bottle gourd, radish, coriander, red amaranthus, tomato, ridge gourd and sweet corn among the species that are at the germination stage. Despite the heavy monsoons and the presence of wildlife, we have successfully created a nursery which hosts a multitude of plants from arabica coffee to silk cotton and from papaya to avocado. We can’t wait for October when we start planting these little guys to create a forest friendly estate where coffee is just one of the layers.

With the Blyton Bungalow finally completed, our hospitality team is working diligently towards creating a warm and memorable experience for guests. The team has picked up the ropes really well with Ravi anna (our chef) now making vegan meals on request.

Growing vegetables in areas of heavy rainfall has been a challenge usually taken up using glass and poly houses. We are trying a similar, but more open mix with farm yard waste. With the top protected from the rain, while it’s reducing direct sunlight, the staff on ground have come up with a permanent bed structure confined with spare fibre sheets from the farm. It’s difficult to tell how well the plants will grow but they’ve sprouted and are well for now.

Like the shed for the permanent vegetable beds, the vermicompost units have been made using the same material for the structure. A blend of leaves and twigs with cow dung and worms. These are early stages, but we are hoping for the best

We began the month by organising a pooja for the Blyton Bungalow. With the furniture and interiors drawing to a close, our next steps would be focussed towards hospitality guest experience mentoring which we are exploring with our very own member experts – Payal and Harsha. With the Estate Managers house also ready, Rathan is getting ready to shift in.

At the farm, while the cardamom plants are looking healthy, the soil in Block 1 seems to be getting more acidic and we are exploring interventions with some permaculturists.

The new Arabica plantation is shaping up well too and we are exploring tie-ups with speciality coffee roasters.

The big news of course is that the Blyton Bungalow is all set to open by the second week of May. Once we take the handover and have gone through the usual niggles, we will be opening it up for guests and curated experiences. To kickstart this, we will be conducting an Isha Yoga workshop from the 27th to the 29th for an exclusive audience where the participants will be housed at the Blyton Bungalow.

The Estate manager’s house too is almost done and is looking gorgeous against the backdrop of Block 1 of our estate. The partitioning and the designing of the private estates is underway and the first registrations are set for May. We expect that by June end, the collective structure would fully be in place and the asset transfer would have been done.

We are also interacting with a few members to help us create curated experiences centered around the diversity that is present at Poomaale. Watch this space for more.

Like at Hyderabad, the Poomaale Estate has also been completely subscribed to and there is a lot of on ground action to look forward to. With the LLP agreement in place we are now moving to have the master service agreement drafted by the second week of April.

Formalities for handing over the private estates are underway, while the Blyton Bungalow and Estate Manager’s house near completion. Expecting a handover by 15^th April, we anticipate a spate of new members and visitors lining to see the estate.      

On the coffee front, we closed processing of harvest at 150 bags of dried cherries and are now proceeding towards pruning of the coffee trees. Our efforts towards increasing the diversity at the estate are running according to plans, with 3000 saplings ready in the nursery, waiting to be planted. And finally, the blossom showers came in 2 weeks late, but as they say ‘better late than never’.

Construction activities at the Poomaale Estate continue. The much awaited Blyton Bungalow has finally reached its finishing stages. The furniture is scheduled to arrive in the first week of March and the external landscaping to be done by around the second week.

The grid connectivity at the estate has been approved with a 63KVA transformer and the connection should be up by the 1^st week of March. This would be well in time for the Estate Managers house, which is also inching towards completion. We expect Rathan, our Estate Manager, to start living there by April.   

The markings of the private estates are also in progress and we aim to start construction soon. 

Last but not the least, coffee picking continues at the estate. The yield in Block 1 has gone-up considerably to around 3 to 4 Kgs per plant, which is much higher as compared to 1 to 2 Kgs from last year. Just Block 1 has contributed more than 100 bags this time. 

Work at the Poomaale Estate is on at full flow.

The Estate Managers house is almost ready. As the Blyton Bungalow approaches completion, work has started on the interiors and external courtyard. We are building lots of nooks and multiutility corners around the building to make sure you have lots of things to do when you are there. And yes, a place for a camp fire as well. 

For the private estates, we have begun the partitioning and paperwork. 

The coffee harvesting is in progress and will go on till the end of February. We had done some experiments in Block 1 where we tried 20% shade lopping, pruning etc. These seem to have raised the per plant coffee produce to 3Kg from the previous 1.3Kg. But it’s too early to say this is a trend. 

We will be mostly open to guests from March onwards. Watch this space for more.